Food mixing machines are commonly utilized by fast food establishments or the like, particularly those that blend condiments or other foods into ice cream in a container for consumption by the customer with a spoon. The blending is typically performed by an agitator carried at the bottom of a rotating shaft. The ice cream and other foods to be blended are put into a container and the agitator is positioned in the ice cream to blend the product.
After use, the agitator must be cleaned to avoid contamination of the next product to be blended.
In order to avoid the step of cleaning the agitator, disposable agitators have been developed which are placed on the rotating shaft prior to use, and removed from the rotating shaft after use. As a result, the shaft does not need to be cleaned between each usage.
Some of those disposable agitators have been formed in the shape of a spoon. In those devices, the bowl of the spoon mixes the product and the handle of the spoon is hollow and is received over at least a portion of the rotatable shaft of the food mixer. The spoon shaft is provided with a clip which is snapped over a rib provided on the rotatable shaft to attach the spoon to the shaft. The product is then blended and the spoon removed from the shaft. This system is advantageous not only because of the saving of time by not having to clean the agitator after each use, but also the spoon can be given to the customer to consume the food thereby saving the establishment the cost of providing conventional spoons to the customer.
The fast food establishments are always striving to make these machines more automatic for the ease of operation by the user. Yet the user is still required to remove the disposable agitator from the rotating shaft which is not always a simple procedure. When the agitator is in the shape of a spoon, at least the customer is induced to remove it from the shaft, but no existing machine includes the feature of automatically releasing the disposable agitator from the shaft without the need for the customer to manually grasp and remove it.
Moreover, no agitator in the shape of a spoon has been designed to allow such an automatic release. Specifically, the hollow stems of the prior art spoons provide no surface to be acted upon for automatic ejection. In addition, these hollow stems present a structural weakness and a manufacturing problem in that an expensive, high maintenance mold, with a long pull to produce the hollow stems, is required.
Thus, the need exists for a machine which is produced with an automatic agitator release system, and for an agitator which is in the shape of a spoon which can be easily manufactured and which can compliment the agitator release system of the machine.